The present invention relates to oil burners suitable for use in heating installations of various kinds but particularly for those intended for use in association with domestic heating units and especially domestic hot water heating units.
Oil-burning hot-water heaters of the type used in many households are unable to operate efficiently due in part to the design of the burners thereof and partly because the oil and air which provides the combustible mixture are both fed to such burners under considerable pressure. The combustion chambers of most domestic burners are considerably smaller than those of commercial hot water heaters for example. As a result of these considerations fuel tends to be swept through these chambers before it can be preheated and mixed thoroughly as is necessary if a high rate of heat release is to be achieved. A high-pressure burner requires that the combustion chamber associated therewith be lined with a refractory material, and to sustain combustion this material must be incandescent. However since the demand for hot water is not great or frequent, such burners only operate at fairly widely spaced intervals and then usually for only a short period of time. Accordingly, at each time of use the burner should be brought up to an operating temperature which will permit the fuel to burn properly. But length warmup further reduces the effectiveness of such burners because in fact the surrounding refractory material is not brought up properly to incandescence each time and as a result, conventional hot water heating equipment and especially conventional domestic hot-water heating equipment operates considerably below optimum efficiency from the standpoint of economy as well as from the standpoint of frequency of maintenance which is required to keep an inefficient burner clean.